Exploring Fashion & Culture in the most African U.S. City

It’s a Man’s World

Photos by danielle c miles – The Corner:Corners, neutral grounds, stoops, shade trees and corner stores have long been cornerstones in Black communities across the world. From the exchange of neighborhood gossip to political debates, dominos, chess games on legless tables balanced on the knees of the players, to the trading of goods and services beneath signs that scream “NO LOITERING!”– which is perceived as more of a request than a demand, cornerstores — these locations continue to provide space for gathering and communal expression of Blackness. “The Corner” is an ongoing photo-documentary project takes an intimate look at their confluence in the Black community.

We underrated, we educated
The corner was our time when times stood still
And gators and snakes gangs and yellow and pink
And colored blue profiles glorifying that…

The corner was our magic, our music, our politicsFires raised as tribal dancers andwar cries that broke out on different cornersPower to the people, black power, black is beautiful…
The corner was our Rock of Gibraltar, our Stonehenge
Our Taj Mahal, our monument,
Our testimonial to freedom, to peace and to love
Down on the corner

-Common featuring The Last Poets, The Corner, 2005

MWENDE: PANTS–My friend found them for me after an estate sale along with some pearls SHOES: Got them from Buffalo Exchange after trading in some clothes some Tulane students had thrown away at the end of a school year

GLASSES: Borrowed from my friend Savv who always has the dopest shades NECKLACE: Bought from a vendor at the Women of the World Poetry Slam in Albuquerque 5 HEAD:Inherited from my father BEADED BANGLE: Purchased at the Community Book Center in New Orleans BARELY THERE EYEBROWS: Inherited from my mother

MWENDE: DOLLA DOLLA BILLS (yall):It was my 24th birthday on this shoot! In NOLA people pin money on a person when it’s their birthday, we went into Buttermilk drop and they gave me my first dollars 😀

Mwende Katwiwa:When I was a small girl, my parents dressed me in typically feminized ways. The older I got and the less control they had over my appearance, the more masculine presenting I became. I was labeled a ‘tom-boy’ throughout most of my life, but it was a simplification of how I felt in relationship to my gender expression. Growing up, I didn’t necessarily want to be more masculine/a tomboy, I just clearly was not a ‘typical girl’. Femininity felt clumsy on me, like a flamingo on roller skates, so I embraced masculinity to the point where my brother and I were once mistaken for twin boys as kids. Even though somewhere deep inside I had a longing to embrace and express femininity (later I realized it had more of a desire for the acceptance that came with femininity than actual femininity itself but hey I was like 7, gimme a break), there was also safety in masculinity that I embraced and thrived under as a child.

I remember the day I could no longer pretend I wasn’t a girl. I had come home from a basketball game and was sitting on the floor talking to my mom when I laid back and my sleeveless basketball shirt fell over my chest in a way that would be innocent in my childhood, but wasn’t anymore (I hadn’t realized…or didn’t want to realize that my body was was changing). My mom quickly pulled my shirt back over my chest and commented on how it was time to get a bra and I froze thiking ‘A bra…? For what?’ . I was only 11 or 12 when puberty hit, so it hadn’t really occurred to me that my body would be changing in ways that would threaten the identity I had constructed in my youth. When my body did change (in what was probably like a year but seemed like all of 7 hours) it changed my entire relationship to expressing myself. I went from having a fairly boxy body that was easy to present as masculine to developing into the shape that I have today. At 12. I struggled to maintain my ‘tom-boy-ish-ness’ as my body and mind developed, but somewhere inside I was also secretly was happy to finally be able to be recognizably a girl/woman.

Around the same time I hit puberty, my family relocated to a new area, and I made a decision to test out what I had been told was femininity where no one had known the old me. I dove head first into it for about 2 years, but at some point in high school, I hit a wall and realized I couldn’t keep pretending I found comfort or safety in feminine expression and the apparent sexualization that necessarily came with it. I remember staring at myself one day in the mirror and just cutting all of my hair off, going into my room and throwing away all my skin tight shirts and jeans. It was like finding a part of myself I had forgotten I had lost. I settled into a more masculine womanhood after realizing that I had been operating under a very narrow definition of feminine expression that was ultimately harmful because it was more for other people’s consumption than myself.

When I was in college, I made a decision to re-examine femininity with a wider lens, and about a year ago, I made a conscious decision to stop being afraid of expressing myself in feminine ways. I would be lying if I said I felt physically more comfortable in a dress than a button down shirt and slacks, but I would also be lying if I said I didn’t feel good in ‘women’s clothes’ and makeup (well, in lipstick anyway. I still don’t wear other make up except for shoots but even that’s just eyeliner and mascara). I’m definitely not done exploring my masculinity/femininity and how they intersect, overlap and complicate my gender expression, my love life and my personal identity, but at this point in my life, I’m not afraid of finding the answer. As I start my 24th rotation around the sun, I am making a conscious decision to express myself comfortably not necessarily along any binaries and just see where that takes me.

Denisio –BLAZER: is one of the remaining items from an online vintage shop I had with a friend. PANTS: are part of a vintage suit. SHIRT:belongs to my partner Michael. I steal his clothes a lot 😉

SHOES: Another thrifted treasure from Maryland. The soles are disintegrating so they are purely for show! BRIEFCASE: was found here in New Orleans. Michael and I lost the combination but a quick google search on his part helped us crack the code!

HIPS: courtesy of my father’s side of the family, and also eating things like Buttermilk Drops on a weekly basis.

Denisio Truitt: Once my mom told me that had I been a boy, my father planned to name me Gabriel after a close friend who passed long before I was born. This was later on in my life when conversations between mothers and daughters transform into something more honest, candid. Something about that conversation an the idea of a phantom boy that never came haunted me for years. Perhaps it was because even without the knowledge of Gabriel, I remember feeling energies in my child body that felt feminine and at times masculine.

I arrived into this world a screeching blue-faced little girl with a mass of black curly hair already springing from my scalp. I would go on to play with brown barbies and My Little Ponies, love all things pink and purple and fishing with her Snoopy themed pole. And though my gender identity has always been female, part of me identified with a maleness that framed the edges of my femininity; something treading just beneath the surface that went beyond the physical ways I chose to express myself. My preteen through junior high years were spent in ambiguity: cargo pants, loose shirts and neutral palettes one day, babydoll dresses and platforms the next. In high school I grew hips and thighs and it felt good to me to accentuate them, so the scales tipped toward more “traditionally” female attire which remained through my 20’s and into my 30’s.

Today I am probably the most feminized than I’ve ever been though there is still a masculine presence within my psyche (even with my preferred attire being anything sequins and heels). And occasionally my clothing reflects that presence; there are days here and there where I find more comfort in loose slacks and button ups than a vintage disco dress. I call those my Gabriel days.

Noirlinians is a love story by two wandering Daughters of the African diaspora

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Noirlinians is an AfroFashion blog exploring the complex relationship between culture, clothing & identity in the diaspora. Featuring Liberian artist and designer Denisio Truitt of DOPEciety and poet and organizer Mwende “FreeQuency” Katwiwa, the idea for the blog emerged after a fast friendship developed between the two based on their African heritage and artistic interests.